Arrowood

‘We don’t know he was behind it.’

He cracked his walking stick hard against the kerb, a look of utmost misery on his face.

‘We’ve led that dear girl to her death. That cur from the Beef saw us at the house. We might as well have killed her ourselves.’

‘We didn’t know they all worked in the Beef.’

‘Damn it, Barnett. It’s starting again. The whole cursed Cream business.’

‘Perhaps we should leave it to the police,’ I suggested.

‘That idiot Petleigh will never find the killer.’

The guvnor glanced back at the church. When we’d turned the corner he held out a small, twisted handkerchief.

‘This was gripped in her hand,’ he said. ‘I’m sure she held it for us.’

He opened the handkerchief. Inside was a single brass bullet.

Chapter Five

We arrived in Great Dover Street later that evening, where a row of milliners, dress shops and shoe shops all had their lights on for the evening trade. At the end was a coffee grinder, and the breeze carried the rich smells of the roasting beans. There was only one photographer’s studio, called ‘The Fontaine’. A man in a green velvet jacket with hair reaching his collar stood at the desk constructing a picture frame. He held a small hammer in his hand and a pin in his mouth.

‘Good day, sirs,’ he said with an insincere smile. ‘How may I help you? Is it a portrait you’re after?’

‘We’re looking for Miss Cousture,’ said the guvnor, glancing around at the photographic portraits on the walls. ‘Is she here?’

‘She’s at work,’ the man replied, pulling back his long head disdainfully. ‘I’m the proprietor, Mr Fontaine. Do you want to book a portrait?’

‘Did you take these?’ asked the guvnor, indicating the pictures. ‘They’re very good.’

‘Yes indeed. All my own work. I could make a fine image of you, sir, if you don’t mind me saying. Your profile is quite wonderful.’

‘Do you think so?’ asked the guvnor, his chest inflating. He smoothed the hair around his crown. ‘I’ve been thinking of commissioning a picture for some time. I think my sister would very much like a portrait above the fire.’

I looked at him, unable to suppress a smile at the thought of such a gift.

‘We can book it in now, sir. Shall we say Monday morning? Eleven o’clock?’

‘Yes . . . Ah. Wait. On second thoughts, I’d better wait until I’ve taken possession of my new suit. But might we speak to Miss Cousture now? On a personal matter.’

The artist looked down his long nose at us for some time.

‘It’s important, Mr Fontaine,’ I said, growing impatient. ‘Is she here?’

With a theatrical sigh and a shake of his lank black hair, he disappeared behind a curtain at the back of the store. A moment later Miss Cousture appeared.

‘Good day, Mr Arrowood,’ she said quietly as she swept through the curtains. She was wearing a high-waisted black skirt, a white blouse rolled to her sleeves, her hair pinned up on her head. She nodded at me. ‘Mr Barnett.’

Mr Fontaine appeared behind her and stood by the curtain, his arms crossed.

She flicked her eyes at her employer as if to warn us not to talk. There followed a silence. Her pale cheeks coloured. She looked at her boots.

‘Would you mind if we have a private moment with the lady, sir?’ asked the guvnor finally. Noticing that his tie had blown over his shoulder from the breezy street, I stepped forward and flipped it back. He took a quick backward swipe at me.

‘This is my studio, sir,’ said the man with a sniff. He rubbed his long nose quickly. ‘The name above the door is mine, not the lady’s. If you have something to say, get on and say it.’

‘Then will you come outside, madam?’

‘Oh, putain, Eric!’ she cursed, turning to her employer. ‘One moment, that is all!’

On the lips of this fine woman, the profanity turned the air cold. Fontaine threw his head back and ducked behind the curtain. We heard his angry footsteps on the stairs.

The guvnor pulled a chair from behind the counter and lowered himself down with a wince. He rubbed his feet through his tight boots. For some time he didn’t speak.

‘We need to ask you a few more questions, miss,’ he said at last.

‘Of course. But I tell you all I know.’

‘We must know what trouble your brother was in,’ he said, a pained smile on his red face. ‘Any small thing he might have said. Please be quite open with us.’

‘Of course.’

‘Did you know his friend Martha?’

She shook her head.

‘His sweetheart. You didn’t know about her?’

‘I never heard the name.’

‘Well, Miss Cousture, I’m afraid to say she was murdered this afternoon.’

We watched as her face turned from surprise to sadness. She gripped the counter and lowered herself onto the stool.

‘We had an appointment to meet but someone got to her first,’ explained the guvnor.

She nodded slowly.

‘We also discovered there was some trouble in the Barrel of Beef just before Thierry disappeared. The only clue we have is that it might involve an American. Did Thierry mention any such thing to you?’

‘An American?’ she said, a disappointed tone in her voice. ‘No, never. What is the name?’

‘We don’t have a name. All we know is that the day your brother disappeared there was an argument involving an American. We don’t even know for sure Thierry was involved. But please think again. Did anything happen before he disappeared? Was there any change in him?’

‘Only when he comes to me for money. The last time I see him, I tell you he’s scared.’ She paused, her eyes travelling quickly from the guvnor to me and back again. ‘Do you think he’s dead? Is that what you mean by “trouble”?’

The guvnor took her hand and held it.

‘It’s too early to think of that, miss.’

She was about to speak again when Mr Fontaine swept back through the curtain. This time he would not be budged.

We walked back towards Waterloo. The air was still and a fog had descended.

‘Barnett,’ said the guvnor at length. ‘Was there anything that struck you as odd about what we’ve just seen?’

I thought for a bit, trying to guess what he’d noticed.

‘Not as I could say,’ I said at last.

‘Tell me, if Mrs Barnett had disappeared without taking her clothes or her papers, and you’d appointed a detective, and let’s imagine that two days later the detective came to see you. You’re quite mad with worry, remember.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What would be the first thing you would say to him?’

‘I suppose I’d ask if he’d found her.’

‘Exactly, Barnett.’ His brow tensed. ‘Exactly.’

The guvnor continued home to ponder this development, while I returned to the White Eagle. I had myself a bowl of oysters and then a plate of mutton as I waited, and then a glass of porter, and then another. It was a noisy night, and I was happy enough to sit in the corner and watch my fellow citizens larking about under the great looking glass as stretched the length of the ceiling. Later on, the match-seller trudged in. He looked at no one as he made his way across the syrupy floor, but held his face in a rictus in case he should launch into some anarchic pantomime. He paid, took his glass, and went to hide in his usual corner behind the glass panel.

When the crowd began to thin, Ernest stumbled in and stood at the same place at the bar as before. He took himself a gin and drank it quick, his back hunched over the counter. He wore the same thick clothes as before, and didn’t appear to see anyone around him except the barmaid, who slammed his drink before him as if he’d insulted her mother.

‘Good to see you again, my friend,’ I said, placing a second glass before him. ‘Come sit at my table. I could do with a bit of company.’

He looked up with confusion in his eyes. He glanced at the gin, then back at me. A trickle of blood from his gums ran down his single remaining front tooth.

‘Eh?’ he said at last.

‘We met the other night, Ernest. Here. Two nights ago.’

Slowly, his watery eyes cleared and he seemed to remember me. He pulled himself upright. Then he became suspicious.

‘I ain’t got no money,’ he declared, before quickly swallowing the whole glass in one.

‘Come over. I’ll get you some oysters.’

‘What is it you want?’

I lowered my voice. The cab driver I’d seen before was leaning against the bar in the corner, talking with the barmaid.

‘I want some information is all.’

He shook his head.

‘I don’t know nothing. I should never have spoke to you the first time.’

He turned away from me. From behind the glass partition an arm flailed, followed by an irritated growl. A group of young men, their faces and hands black with coal dust, came over to look at the source, and the sight of the tortured match-seller trying to suppress his mania made them laugh. They returned to their table, but the ruckus went on for minutes. From behind the screen came another strangled yowl and a foul curse from the ticcing man, which made the young men burst into a second, louder round of laughter.

‘Let me get you another drink,’ I said to the sculleryman. Before he could refuse, I gestured to the barmaid and placed a nice mug of gin in his raw fist.

‘Let’s sit. You look like you need to get the weight off your feet. You’ve been working hard, Ernest.’

He followed me meekly to the table.

‘Did you ever see Thierry’s sister at the Beef?’ I asked when we were sat down. ‘Good looker, dark hair? French, as you might suppose.’

He breathed in sharply, then quickly swallowed his gin.

‘Not as I ever saw. Never saw him with any woman but Martha.’

‘What about the American? What did you hear about him?’

‘You said oysters?’ he said, folding his arms over his matted coat.

I went to get him a bowl and another mug of gin. He’d got through half of it and survived a short burping fit before I asked him again.

‘Mr Cream has plenty of business acquaintances,’ he replied. ‘They was in day after day. Some of them you’d recognize, but this one I never seen before. Bald, with black hair around the crown. Black beard. Blue eyes that pierced you. I took them up some coffee and he almost stared right through me. There was an Irishman with him. I seen him in the place a few times before. Little fellow with a big voice. Stringy yellow hair. One of his ears was cut off. Horrible-looking he was.’

‘And you don’t know his business, I suppose.’

‘They talk business in the office, not the scullery.’

‘I need to know anyone else Terry was tight with, Ernest. Who did he talk to? Give me some names.’

‘I give you a name last time. Martha. Ask her.’

‘I need another name.’

‘I’ve given you a name!’ he protested, chafing now that he was flushed through with gin. ‘Ask Martha. If anybody knows anything, it’ll be her.’

I leaned in to him and whispered, ‘She’s dead, Ern. Murdered on her way to work this evening.’

His mouth fell open; he stared at me with his rheumy eyes. It seemed as if his pickled brain couldn’t absorb what I’d told him.

‘Did you hear me? Murdered. That’s why I need to talk to somebody else.’

Slowly, fear took him over. His arm trembled, his eyes blinked fast. He swallowed his gin; I gestured for another.

When it arrived he shook his head.

‘I got to go, mister,’ he said. His voice was strained. ‘I don’t know nothing.’

He made a move to rise; I held his wrist fast.

‘A name, Ern. One name. Someone he might have talked to. Who did he work next to? Who in the Beef did he spend most time with?’

‘I suppose Harry.’ He was talking quick now, looking around him at each noise. ‘You could try him. One of the junior cooks. He worked in the same part of the kitchen.’

‘And what does he look like?’

‘Very thin. Unnatural thin, he is, and his eyebrows are dark but his hair’s yellow. You can’t miss him.’

I let go of his wrist.

‘Thank you, Ernest.’

In a flash he was up and scurrying out of the gin-house. As I rose, I felt someone’s eyes on me. I turned. The bald head of the match-seller had appeared around the side of the glass partition, and he was staring at me with curiosity. He sniffed, his shoulders twitched, and he disappeared back into his hole.

Chapter Six

The next morning, I found the guvnor alone in his parlour. His face was red and had a peculiar shine to it as if he’d been buffed by a cleaning maid.

‘She’s out,’ he declared the minute I stepped in from the shop. ‘She’s at an organizing meeting with the others.’

‘Organizing? What’s she organizing?’

‘They’re to visit the poor. Now, what did you discover last night?’

I told him about the junior cook, Harry. Since neither of us had any particular inclination to show our face in the Barrel of Beef, he summoned Neddy and instructed him to take a note. The note was signed ‘Mr Locksher’, the guvnor’s usual alias, and promised a reward of a shilling for ‘a very quick job indeed’. Harry was to come that night, after his work was over, to Mrs Willows’ coffeehouse on Blackfriars Road, the only one open until such a late hour. ‘Your friend from across the Channel suggested your name’ was all the explanation offered. Neddy was under instruction to hold tight to that note and not to give it to anyone other than the fellow called Harry. We told him to look out for the thin man with black eyebrows and yellow hair, and to walk direct into the kitchen and not to tell anybody who had sent him.

The boy scampered off while the guvnor refilled his pipe. When he had it lit again, he looked at me sadly.

‘What do you think about the girl’s death, Barnett? Do you think it was Jack on the prowl again?’

‘It doesn’t seem like it.’

‘Indeed. This murder wasn’t Jack’s work. His killings were all of a similar character. He did his work in solitary places. He preferred to butcher the bodies, and this takes time.’

I waited, knowing from the way he stared into the air that there was more to come.

‘I’ve been thinking about this man,’ he continued. ‘First, there’s his precision. He hurries to the church, delivers three deadly blows and runs into the crowd. He leaves nothing, no clues, no knife. He’s rapid and careful, so we can assume it isn’t an act of passion. Neither was it robbery. A robber wouldn’t choose a poor girl as his victim, not in daylight, and not on a busy street.’

‘He wouldn’t have time to search her pockets.’

‘Quite so.’ He puffed on his pipe and thought. ‘And his clothes. He wears a winter coat when it’s summer. It’s too big for him. Therefore he’s either a man of little means or in disguise. Tell me, as you chased, did he look back?’

‘Not once. I had my eyes on him all the time until I lost him. I only saw the side of his face as he turned the corner.’

‘He didn’t turn his head once to determine whether he was pursued?’

I shook my head.

‘Tell me, if you’d murdered a person on a busy street and fled, how would you feel?’

‘My blood would be up, I suppose. I’d be anxious not be caught.’

‘Yes, yes, and would you turn your head to see if you were being pursued?’

‘I reckon so.’

‘You wouldn’t be able to stop your head turning, Barnett. Your strong emotions would make you do it. This man isn’t like you. He’s used to controlling his emotions. So what is he? A hired assassin? A police officer?’

‘A soldier?’

He nodded, placing his pipe in the ash dish and pushing himself out of the chair.

‘That’s a start. And now we’ll go and visit Lewis. I don’t want to be here when Ettie resumes her reorganization of my life, and you’d better not be here either else she’ll begin on yours.’

Lewis Schwartz was the proprietor of a dark weaponry shop not far from Southwark Bridge. It was where people came with pistols and shotguns they desired to sell; it was where people came when they needed to buy some self-protection. It wasn’t a business I’d have wished to be in: I could only imagine the criminals who came and went from this boutique, but Lewis was as solid and unaffected by the danger of his trade as the river walls that seeped their yellow pus into the bricks of his dark shop. He was a fat man with one missing arm and stringy grey hair that fell onto his grimy collar. The guvnor and him were old friends. He used to go to Lewis when he needed information for the newspaper and, since we’d become private agents, he continued to help us from time to time. The guvnor always brought a packet of mutton or roasted beef or a bit of liver from the cookshop, which he would slap on the little table foul with grease. I was in the habit of standing back on these occasions, just as I did now, my mind imagining all the diseases whose traces could no doubt be found on the mud-black hands of our friend.

Today, Lewis ate carefully, chewing on one side of his mouth only.

‘You got tooth problems?’ I asked him.

‘One of the devils is playing me up.’

‘Let me see,’ demanded the guvnor.

Lewis opened his mouth and tipped back his head. The guvnor winced.

‘That tooth is black. You must have it pulled.’

‘I’m mustering my courage.’

‘Sooner the better,’ said the guvnor.

It was only when the beef was finished, and the fingers wiped on the trousers of these two old friends, that the guvnor fished in his waistcoat pocket and pulled out the bullet.

‘Any idea who might use a bullet such as this, Lewis?’

Lewis put on his eyeglasses and held it under the lamp.

‘Very nice,’ he murmured, turning the bullet this way and that, rubbing its shaft with his fingers. ‘It’s a .303. Smokeless. But how did you come by something like this, William?’

‘A dying girl gave it to me,’ said the guvnor. ‘A young innocent girl, murdered before our eyes. And we mean to find out who killed her. Do you know what type of gun it’s from, Lewis?’

‘The new Lee-Enfield repeating rifles.’ Lewis handed the bullet back. ‘Military rifles, only issued to a few regiments so far. This is no huntsman’s rifle. She must have got it from a soldier. Did she have a sweetheart?’

‘He was no soldier.’

‘Then another man. Was she a whore, William?’

‘She was not a whore!’ cried the guvnor.

Lewis looked at him in surprise.

‘Why are you angry?’ he asked. ‘Did you know her?’

‘I don’t understand why everyone assumes she was a whore. She worked in the Barrel of Beef.’

‘She might have been given it by a customer,’ I said, understanding that the guvnor had attached the same purity to Martha as he attached to his wife.

‘Why would a customer give a girl a bullet?’ asked Lewis, his nose twitching. ‘A tip, now that would be one thing. But why a bullet?’

The guvnor shook his head and stood.

‘That’s what we have to find out,’ he said.

As we reached the door, a match flared. The guvnor turned back. Lewis sat hunched in his chair at the back of the shop, surrounded by boxes of bullets and sheaves of gunpowder, a glowing pipe in his mouth.

‘One day you’ll blow yourself up,’ the guvnor said to his friend. ‘I’ve warned you about this for years. Why do you never listen?’

Lewis waved him away.

‘If I started to worry now I’d have to sell up this shop and become a potato-man,’ he said. ‘You should see some of the individuals I have to deal with. One spark and they would explode themselves. Next to them, this is nothing.’

*

Late that night, we waited in Mrs Willows’ coffeehouse. I watched the street outside ebb and flow in the mud and the brown rain, the night-time people stagger and shriek, the horses clop by, their heads low and weary. Midnight passed and the dark new day took its place outside the grimy window. The guvnor read the newspapers like a glutton. He started with Punch, stowing Lloyd’s Weekly and the Pall Mall Gazette under his thighs. On the next table, a thin fellow with the uniform of an undertaker ate a packet of whelks and watched him unhappily, waiting for the chance of a read before he wandered home. But the guvnor took his time, reading every column, every page, then just when it seemed he was finished he went back to the beginning and began scanning the columns again.

‘Look at this, Barnett,’ he said, holding up a cartoon. It was of a tall Irish peasant holding a knife over a cringing English gentleman. The caption read: The Irish Frankenstein. ‘They’re printing these cartoons again. You see what they do? The Irish have monkeys’ faces, covered in hair. The Englishman is defenceless. Good God, why does this never change? Why will they not see our own aggression?’

‘I suppose they don’t want to see it, sir.’

The undertaker cleared his throat and nodded at the paper. The guvnor lit his pipe, then without a word thrust the paper at the man, before lifting his leg and continuing on to the Gazette.

Finally, the door swung open and in walked our man. He stood in the doorway, his long thin arms protruding from a brown woollen coat that was too long in the body and too short in the limbs. His yellow hair was tucked into a grey cloth cap pulled down over his ears. He looked at the undertaker, at Mrs Willows standing in the door to the kitchen, then at us. His black eyebrows twitched.

‘Mr Harry,’ I said, standing. ‘This is Mr Locksher. Have a sit down. You want a coffee?’

He nodded and sat on a stool.

‘What’s the job?’ he asked.

‘We have a parcel for your friend, Thierry,’ said the guvnor softly, leaning across the table. ‘Only we can’t find him.’

Harry stood.

‘You said a job. That ain’t no job far as I can see.’

‘We’ll pay you for the information.’

He looked back and forth between us for a moment, chewing his lip.

‘No.’

He was turning to leave when I grasped his arm.

‘Let go,’ he demanded, his bristly face pinched. Under the thick wool of his coat, I could feel the bones of his arm: he was thin as a workhouse pensioner. His skin was grey, the rims of his eyes red. The bones of his jaw were sharp like a skull.

It was no trouble to shove him back down on the stool. He was a good few inches taller than me but weak as a sparrow.

The undertaker quickly rose, shoved the remains of his whelks into his pocket, and made his exit. Mrs Willows brought over the coffee, her face calm like nothing was happening.

‘You be nice, Mr Barnett,’ she murmured.

‘We intend to be very nice to the gentleman, Rena,’ said the guvnor.

‘I don’t know nothing,’ said the man. ‘Honest. I can’t help you. He’s gone. Went off a few days ago now. Probably gone back to France. That’s all I can think.’ He glanced up at me. ‘That’s all I can say, sirs.’

‘You’re a thin man for a cook,’ the guvnor observed.

‘Cook’s helper. I do the peelings mostly. Pull the bones out the fishes. I ain’t no big cook.’

The guvnor leaned over the table suddenly and shoved his hand in the man’s coat pocket. Before Harry could respond, he pulled out a greasy packet and dropped it on the table.

‘It’s a pudding,’ said Harry, his tone defensive. ‘Half a pudding.’

‘What’s in there?’ asked the guvnor, indicating the other pocket.

‘Couple of spuds. Bit of a ham bone. They was going to throw it.’

‘I doubt that,’ I said, having a bit of a look in his pocket. ‘Ain’t nothing wrong with that food. Even if it was on the turn, they’d sell it in the Skirt or outside to those as sleep in the alley.’

‘Don’t tell him, mister. Please. I’ll take it all back. Last thing I need right now is to be out of a job.’

‘No need for that, sir,’ said the guvnor. ‘We’re not on friendly terms with your employer.’

‘Why are you so thin?’ I asked. ‘Are you sick?’

‘If six children be called a sickness. And one of them only two this month.’

‘But you’ve a regular job,’ said the guvnor. ‘Is your wife alive?’